Omega Rising: Remembering Joe D'Amato Page #4

---

I had a very direct and cordial relationship with

him and when I directed Beyond Darkness (La casa 5)

we already had a strong synergy after Troll

2 and so he let me proceed freehandedly.

He would never be invasive. A real cinema-man.

People like him don't exist anymore.

Volcanic because he was fecund

with ideas and projects.

Ironic because he had an accentuated sense cf humour. Bitter

because in his films there is a profound existential streak.

I'm naturally talking about his horror/giaililthriller

works and not the other part of his career.

I didn't know him personally but when

I did meet him the image I had of him

from reading interviews and watching his films,

was confirmed. He was just like I imagined him.

I was introduced to Aristide Massaccesi by Lucio Fulci.

We are in the late eighties, early nineties here.

During this period, Lucio was preparing

with Aristide The Doors to Silence.

One day I receive a telephone call from Aristide's

office telling me they needed somebody to

reshape a script. Aristide wanted to direct

but wasn't convinced by it very much.

We are talking about Frankenstein 2000. I

said yes immediately and went to meet him.

I found a man that was a true Roman, disillusioned,

sarcastic and a pleasure to listen to.

It was a situation similar, but a little more articulated, in

comparison to what I had already done with Cat in the Brain.

Here there was script written by Michele Soavi

and Marcello Modugno in which Aristide wanted to

insert more of a literary connection

with Mary Shelley's novel.

I concentrated myself on the figure of the monster: his awakening,

when he is telepathically reanimated by this girl in a hospital bed

during a dark and stormy night, an atmosphere

that connects it to the literary source.

Then I wrote some of the killings, a few were

already in the script but others I wrote.

The ones committed by the creature who takes

revenge on this friend whom he was very tied to.

Donald O'Brien was a wonderful

person, exquisite.

English, actually Irish, but had lived for many years in America.

Sometimes I still come across old black and white films with him.

Then he came to Italy, maybe to do some films with Fulci,

or even before that with the peplums, inspired by Ben-Hur.

He stayed in Italy as an actor, very

nice and very available.

Poor guy, he had an accident. He

fell in the shower as he was washing

and he hit his head becoming

paralysed completely down one side.

In fact I did a film called Frankenstein 2000,

Return from Death, and he played Frankenstein.

He had a big scar on his forehead,

really well made.

There was a scene in which I had

thirty kids dancing in a discotheque.

Frankenstein arrives and grabs one

of them, kills them.

As we were doing some test shots, one of the kids

comes to me and says This guy is brilliant...

He walks exactly like Frankenstein.

Poor guy walked like that because he was

paralysed. But everybody believed he was acting!

As you know Joe was the producer on his films,

or for many at least, among which this was one.

So he had to combine various necessities. He had

to minimise costs and would work very quickly...

considering he was also the DOP of

the film. He never wasted time.

He had a simple and essential way of directing

but it was also incisive in my opinion

and this Frankenstein wasn't any

different from what he was other films.

When Filmirage died... you have to look

at what the situation was at the time.

There were great difficulties in getting films

of a certain kind theatrical distribution.

There weren't as many cinemas any longer and

maybe, unfortunately, the industry has been

saturated and was overflown by

too much product.

The public turned their backs on certain genres, like

the erotic films which were previously popular...

so Aristide facing this situation had to make hard

decisions. He had more debt than money coming in.

A lot of other companies were

closing by the early nineties.

The Americans had complete

reign on the market.

As a business man he maybe had some faults.

He didn't really give priority to money.

He was 100% an artist and was just

happy to make his films.

Unlike Franco Gaudenzi who had reasoned:

I have Zombi 2, so let's make Zombi 3.

Aristide wasn't like that, he chose

the projects he believed in.

He had to be inspired, he had to have fun. The financial

aspect was the last thing he was interested in.

He was a true artist.

His downfall began when Filmirage, which

was a company that worked primarily

on receiving foreign sales,

stopped getting pre-sales.

So he had to turn to porno films, which

didn't give him much satisfaction.

We would sell these small films, as

if they were American.

In places like the American Film Market

in LA, MIFED, Cannes, for a lot of money.

I remember Strike Commando, which I made

with Bruno Mattei, that film exploded...

it was sold all over the place.

We invested a lot in that market but after some time

we realised that we were becoming too small for it.

The average American product was too higher

budgeted compared to what we could do...

there wasn't that equilibrium anymore and in fact in the early

nineties I started moving away from that genre and situation.

The same thing happened to Aristide

when there wasn't a market any longer.

The only thing he could do was porn but it wasn't

a world that he wanted anything to do with.

The feeling that this kinda of cinema

was dying... I didn't have it.

I came in late, when Italian genre

cinema had dissolved.

Then the actual directors

started dying...

and one had to adapt.

On why this type of cinema died is

not something I won't to dwell on.

It's always the same question...

but who cares?!

Things have changed and

have evolved.

Now we have TV series that cost

much more than films.

I adapted myself, like when I learnt

how to use all this sort of stuff.

It's part of the evolution and

it's a cultural thing.

It's for the most part a

cultural thing.

I heard some rumours about debts due

to bad business ventures

but mostly conducted by Massaccesis

partner, not by him.

About the films that flopped...

all of his films were flops because they weren't films

that anybody expected would take in much money.

I'm talking about the period

of Anthropophagus...

Absurd...t hey were films already covered by

distributors and financiers. He wouldn't put a penny.

He would put in his time, his energy,

his equipment but never any money.

He started producing with his own money when

he started doing a series of porn films.

They were projects that were

made in three days.

He would got to the States and

direct a dozen in a week.

I once told him what I thought. You must

choose. You have two roads in front of you...

You can become a big producer, if you stop

wanting to do everything by yourself.

Or you can continue like this and

everything you do will be driven by fear.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes